


The Burden of Living

by Jadedphase



Series: Who We Become [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the white room there is nothing but silence and his own thoughts to keep him company, Jasper has lost the will to carry on. The ghosts are haunting him and he's so close to breaking, what he needs now is the one thing so far from his reach; the people he has learned to live for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burden of Living

The ivory walls had burned a cold spot into Jasper's mind, all the way into his soul and forcefully scrubbed away all the color until he was left feeling empty; so utterly, entirely empty.  
The breaking point was right at the edge of his next breath and it was all he could do to urge his lungs to keep going, his body on autopilot while his mind lingered miles away from the sterile ceiling above.  
He would die there, he was certain, but he had plenty of ghosts to keep him company.

How it had happened he still wasn't sure, in a moment of bitter victory he had stumbled after Clarke into the air tainted with the scent of burnt flesh and the crack of ruined ground under his feet, then the next there was smoke and a heaviness in his limbs that he couldn't ignore. The Grounder said something, he couldn't remember what, and that was the end of it all; his world had faded away into red smoke and toxic air filling his lungs. 

And now it was all so painfully white, as stark ivory as the Ark had been dull gray and it hardly mattered since a prison was a prison no matter what color it was painted. 

The difference was that Jasper was no longer certain if it was worth trying to get away.

He had held together some hope in his cell of steel and solitude, knowing there was a chance at life outside the walls, knowing there might be a moment when he could laugh again. There may have been a day when he and Monty would spend another afternoon lazing away and skirting responsibility for distraction.

The hope of something good again had kept Jasper alive in a world where he should have lost his mind; it hadn't been enough to break him.

He had lain on that bed for two days, unwilling to move or even acknowledge his own presence in the small room; if he could have shrugged off his heavy body he may have because he couldn't force himself to feel as connected to it anymore. 

When he had left the bed, briefly the first time he'd woken up a stumbling, startled mess trying to make sense of where he was, Jasper had circled the room and stared out the doorway to find nothing else there but another door empty of motion.  
If there was another person in that room he hadn't seen them, he had waited for what felt like hours with his forehead pressed to the glass but there had been nothing but his own reflection staring back at him. 

And Jasper had finally accepted he was alone.

 

Some of his will to continue had dissolved with that possibility; he couldn't survive by himself.  
He didn't want to survival alone because what point was there in making it to the next day if he had nothing but his own shadow and shaky mind to spend his time with? He needed his friends; needed to touch them and feel them real, needed them to touch back and remind him that he was real as well, to talk and laugh and maybe even cry, but mostly Jasper needed his friends because they were his family and he couldn't stand to face that brutal world on his own when they had always been the reason he had to keep fighting for. 

But was that all gone now?

He drug himself up into sitting, knees drawn to his chest with arms wrapped around himself; he could feel his own ribs rubbing against his arms when he moved and it was a weary reminder of the trade-off freedom required. A price more and more costly with each day, one they each had paid in one way or another. 

And some had paid higher than others. 

His thoughts fluttered to Clarke; the idea that she may be gone was impossible because Clarke could not die when she was the strongest of them all. Somewhere she still existed, trapped in walls of white the same as he was. And with that conviction came the one that maybe the rest of their little group still was alive and as well as could be expected.  
Maybe, Jasper thought for a wild moment, even Raven was still there, tended by the madmen who had captured them and made a science experiment of watching the slow insanity of confinement set in.

It was just difficult for Jasper to think it was real, that any of them were real, until he had the chance to feel them solid under his fingers. Clothes and dirty skin, flesh and blood breathing and alive; just one brush of contact would be enough and it was driving Jasper to fits knowing he could not have that so long as he was locked away inside the white room.

All he could hope for was that he would have it soon, that some twist of fate would reunite him with his little makeshift family. 

Jasper sighed, eyes dropped shut in a sluggish blink while his mind turned, spilling around inside his skull like oily waters and tinging his thoughts with ugly little poisoned notions. It was nothing but the truth, but it was a painful truth none the less, and the bright lights above burned in mocking of that pain.

They wouldn't all be there at that meeting. 

 

If he were willing to believe the logic to it all then Jasper knew so many were dead, and among them people he felt his chest ache at the idea of losing. Octavia, strong, beautiful, fiery Octavia; could she truly be gone? He should have never left her alone, but if he hadn't then they may have all died.  
Jasper was so very tired of every choice he had to make being one of sacrificing one for the sake of many; it didn't feel like a victory when it was written in the blood of those lost. 

Finn was gone, Clare would not have abandoned him to the Grounders, she would not have returned to the drop ship if he had been alive. Their voice of peaceful reasoning, their would-be compassionate soul, buried under ash and fire in the most brutal battle they'd had to face. Some part of Jasper wished he had taken more time to listen to Finn, to get to know him better; maybe Finn's way would have been better and he'd been too terrified to accept anything but violence himself being the path of safety. 

But he had followed Bellamy instead, because he had faith in the man to lead them all into battle and beyond it. Bellamy had never been meant to die, he was supposed to come back to carry the weight of those lost, but come back none the less.  
He was dead though, nothing short of death would have kept Bellamy out of that drop ship and with his people, with them. 

That loss struck Jasper with a sick sensation and a wave of weariness; perhaps because it felt like Bellamy had been the one to give him the chance to be what he could be rather than just writing him off as 'poor, nervous Jasper' the way so much of the camp had spoken of him before they saw the strength even he hadn't known he possessed. 

But somehow Bellamy had known, and for some reason Bellamy had faith in him.

And it felt like so nearly too late that Jasper had seen the man as a friend rather than simply a leader to be followed. Bellamy had saved his life not simply when Murphy had captured him but from the moment when he handed him a riffle and decided he deserved the chance to be a hero.  
All he had left to hope for was that he had lived up to Bellamy's expectations and hadn't let him down in the end. 

Maybe he had gotten too closed to Bellamy, some faint nagging voice in the back of his head reminded him that friendship was all well and good but if he ever did see Clarke again he had no idea if he could ever confess to her how he and Bellamy had spent those lonely few hours together.  
He couldn't even claim it was simply desperation, neither of them had been so caught up that they weren't aware of their actions. And even now, in spite of Clarke, Jasper couldn't really admit that he regretted the choice. 

It would have been equally difficult to explain to Monty though.

 

At that thought Jasper sank back down to the bed to resume his staring at the white tiles above, counting the lines between them. 

Monty. 

It was possible that Monty was out there somewhere, alone in the forest and alive; it was both reassuring and frightening to debate it. If anyone was smart enough and understood enough about the woods to survive there it was Monty, but to do it all by himself seemed impossible.  
Jasper himself wasn't sure if he could have faced that; trying to get by all on his own in that huge and demanding world. And thinking that Monty had to be out there alone nearly made him want to cry at the unfair nature of it all; Monty would survive but how long would it be before he stopped seeing a reason to?

And to die alone was the sort of fate that Jasper thought was so incredibly cruel, too horrible to even think of his best friend suffering.

Monty was supposed to be with him, that was the way the universe worked from the moment they had met through all their years of friendship; it was Jasper and Monty because they were opposite sides of the balance they both needed. It was a foundation of laughter and forgivable arguments and comfort in the support of each other, of skirting the rules and finding their own way and when it came down to it only needing each other to get by.

How could he look back on the past and see his life in those memories knowing that the other half of that life was no longer a part of his future? 

Friendship and love all laced with comfortable normality, torn away from him in a way that Jasper had never expected because he had never once in all the dangerous moments that anything could break the ties between them. 

"I'm sorry Monty," he whispered, "I should have tried harder to find you. I just didn't have time."

It didn't matter, Jasper couldn't forgive himself for leaving his best friend behind to get by on his own. To come back to the camp and find only bodies and destruction, to feel the sinking feeling of knowing he was isolated and alone; Jasper would have given anything to have found him before all the chaos.  
Even finding that Monty had died would have been better than the uncertainty of having no idea what his fate had been.

Not that Jasper knew what his own fate would be either, if nothing else Earth was good at taking away all the certainty a person had to cling to.

"I'm sorry too, Octavia, Bellamy, Finn; I don't know what I could have done but maybe there was something," Jasper muttered with a soft sound so close to a sob that he lifted his arm to cover his eyes, not wanting to face those white lights while he felt so weak.

All he could do though was try to live, maybe there would be a chance to get away, to find freedom and his family again; those were the things everyone had died for and the ones Jasper still had to fight for. 

There wasn't much fight left him right then, it had drained away with the aching loss, but maybe by the time he needed it again it would return. That was his weight to carry after all, for all the sacrifices already made; that was the burden of living.


End file.
